The people behind
Sillage Leadership

Much of that work has been transformation under pressure. As the first Managing Director of Epic Theatre Ensemble in New York, he led a restructuring that produced a six-figure surplus and eliminated a third of the company's historical debt in a single year. At Virginia Stage Company, he renegotiated the company's lease with the City for 44% savings. At Chautauqua Theater Company, he steered the organization through steep cuts from its parent institution during the Great Recession, managed a leadership transition, led its first independent strategic planning process, and designed the search for his own successor. At the Playwrights' Center, he led the organization through the pandemic while simultaneously preparing and advancing a $19 million capital campaign — a campaign that produced a new 19,000-square-foot facility, opened in 2025. Throughout, he has treated performance as a focal point for civic dialogue — producing public conversations that invite communities to take up the questions a play raises rather than leave them at the theater door. That conviction has also shaped his approach to public funding, where he has secured millions in federal, state, and municipal investment and served as a national panelist on the congressional earmark process. A thread running throughout is identifying and mentoring the people coming up behind him. Those he has mentored have gone on to lead arts organizations, run foundations supporting artists, build careers at the senior level of international funders, and launch their own businesses. In June 2026 he founded Sillage Leadership to do that work deliberately rather than incidentally. Alongside that mentorship work, he is leading the development of Sillage Leadership France.

She also holds a terminal Master of Arts in Historic Preservation — and you would be surprised how well the preservation and nonprofit fields combine. After almost two decades working with theaters in the Twin Cities (Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the Jungle, and Nautilus Music-Theater among others), she began consulting twenty years ago and has not looked back since. Her clients range from theaters to labor unions, human service organizations to think tanks, film to preschools. She's been described as a "swiss army knife" of nonprofit management, with skills ranging from financials to strategic planning, with some evaluation, fundraising, HR, and operations thrown in. She also frequently sits on grant panels, volunteers in the community, and throws spontaneous gatherings in her renovated Victorian home so that she can ask curious questions of others. Bethany has often served as an "embedded consultant" who works within organizations to affect change, but she is especially excited to see where combining viewpoints and ideas can create lasting impact. If Bethany can get you to start thinking about management in a practical way that supports your organization's core functions and makes you feel empowered in your work, she will have succeeded.

Much of that work has been about building the people and systems that allow organizations to perform at their best. As Director of Production, he managed multi-million-dollar production budgets, consistently keeping operations at or below budget. But numbers only tell part of the story. Through effective leadership, he streamlined communication across departments, oversaw significant capital and facility improvements, and created and negotiated multiple union and non-union contracts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped develop new operating protocols and outdoor performance procedures that allowed the organization to continue its work under unprecedented conditions. A thread running throughout his career is mentorship. Lee Marc has always believed that leadership is more than directing work and individuals — it is helping people understand why the work matters, giving them the tools to succeed, and creating opportunities to take on greater responsibility. His human resources experience, assisting national and international clients in navigating the full lifecycle of their teams, has reinforced the importance of meeting people where they are while helping them move toward where they want to go. That is the work he and his partners are now bringing to corporate organizations: turning decades of practical leadership experience into intentional mentorship that helps people — and the organizations they lead — grow.

Anh Thu continues to speak on issues of equity and inclusion at colleges and universities as well as at local and national arts forums. She served as the managing director of Theater Mu, one of the largest Asian American theater companies in the United States. Her tenure included navigating the changes to the field during the COVID-19 pandemic, racial reckoning in the state after the death of George Floyd in her South Minneapolis neighborhood as well as the Operation Metro Surge in 2026. Anh Thu has previously worked in higher education for over 23 years in finance. Her work there encompassed supporting college admissions budgeting, curriculum evaluation as well as all steps of the budgeting process for multiple university departments as varied as disability access needs, career counseling and ROTC. She currently sits on the board of CAATA (Consortium of Asian American Theater Artists) and MCA (Minnesota Citizens for the Arts) and serves as an advisor to a number of nonprofit leaders.

Her career has centered on building strong teams, developing leaders, and creating the conditions for people and businesses to perform at their highest level. Much of that work has involved taking businesses with significant potential and turning that potential into sustained performance. She has led organizations through rapid growth, operational change, and evolving market conditions, consistently ranking among the top 5% of performers within the organizations she has led. Her experience includes multi-unit leadership across three states as well as high-volume healthcare operations, where commercial performance, operational discipline, regulatory requirements, and client experience must work together. Natalie is particularly drawn to the human side of performance. She has built teams, recognized emerging talent, and developed people into leaders throughout her career. She believes that performance improves when people understand what is expected of them, why it matters, and how their individual contribution connects to the larger organization. Her leadership style is direct and accountable while remaining highly adaptive to the people and circumstances in front of her. Working across both luxury retail and healthcare has given her a deep appreciation for the relationship between culture and customer experience. In both environments, she has seen how leadership behaviors become organizational habits — and how those habits ultimately show up in the experience delivered to customers, patients, and employees. Today, Natalie brings that practical leadership experience to executive leaders and organizations navigating growth, performance challenges, leadership development, and change. Through her consulting practice, she works alongside leaders to strengthen teams, clarify expectations, develop leadership capacity, and turn organizational potential into lasting performance.

As a community engagement leader at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, Michael developed comprehensive strategies that connected artists and their work directly with community stakeholders invested in the themes explored onstage. Through partnerships, conversations, and community-based events, he helped expand the theatre's audiences while moving its approach to engagement beyond benevolence or transaction toward deeper, transformational relationships. Michael believes conversation is central to that transformation. As Director of Equity and Community Partnerships at Children's Theatre Company, he has produced and facilitated public conversations that use art as a catalyst for open dialogue, bringing together artists, audiences, and communities around complex ideas and shared experiences. As Associate Artistic Director, he worked closely with artists and creative teams to support the development and realization of their artistic visions. Michael's leadership is grounded in his own substantial career as an artist. As a playwright and actor, his work has been presented at New York Theatre Workshop, Dance Theater Workshop, American Theatre Project, 7 Stages, and other venues. His plays have contributed to the development of emerging theatrical talent and have been part of the contemporary American theatre landscape for more than three decades. He is an alumnus of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at The Juilliard School.